


the Monstromologist

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural, The Monstromologist
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, M/M, Multi, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:53:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the secrets we have kept. This is the trust we never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for nearly ninety years, the one who gave us his trust, the one for whom we kept these secrets. The one who saved us . . . and the one who cursed us.</p>
<p>So starts the diary of Sam and Dean Winchester, sons and assistants to a doctor with a most unusual specialty: monster hunting. In the time they have lived with the doctor, also known as John Winchester, Sam and Dean have grown accustomed to his late night callers and dangerous business. But when one visitor comes with the body of a young girl and the monster that was eating her, their world is about to change forever. The doctor has discovered a baby Anthropophagus--a headless monster that feeds through a mouth in its chest--and it signals a growing number of Anthropophagi. Now, Sam, Dean, and the doctor must face the horror threatening to overtake and consume their world before it is too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Monstromologist

_the_ Monstrumologist

**mon.strum.ol.o.gy n.**  
1: the study of life forms generally malevolent to humans and not   
recognized by science as actual organisms, specifically those   
considered products of myth and folklore  
2: the act of hunting such creatures

  
One  
“ _Watch the Children_ ”

 

1888

“Get up!” Get up, Sam, Dean, and be quick about it!” he said urgently. “We have a caller!”

  
As Sam roused from his slumber, he caught site of his father, his hair unkempt, eyes wide and shining in the lamplight, Sam was to intimately acquainted with this look of madness on John Winchester’s face.

  
“A caller?” Dean mumbled in reply from beside Sam. “What time is it?”

  
“A little after one. Now get dressed and meet me at the back door. Step lively, Dean, and snap to!”

  
He withdrew from the little alcove, taking the light of the lamp with him. Sam dressed in the dark and scampered down the ladder, putting on the last of his garments, while Dean moved slowly too tired to put on shoes he slipped down the ladder in his stocking feet.

  
Their father had lit the jets along the hall of the upper floor, though but a single light burned on the main floor, in the kitchen at the rear of the old house where just the three of them lived, without so much as a maid to pick up after them: John Winchester was a private man, engaged in a dark and dangerous business, and could ill afford the prying eyes and gossiping tongue of the servant class. When the dust and dirt became intolerable, about every three months or so, he would press a rag and a bucket into his son’s hands and tell them to “snap to” before the tide of filth overwhelmed them.

  
Sam and Dean Winchester followed the light into the kitchen, Dean’s shoes forgotten in his trepidation. This was not the first nocturnal visitor since the Winchester’s had moved in the year before. The Winchester’s had numerous visits in the wee hours of the mourning, more than Sam and Dean cared to remember, and none were cheerful social calls. Their fathers business was dangerous and dark, and so, on the whole, were his callers.

  
The one who called on this night was standing just outside the back door, a gangly, skeletal figure, his shadow rising wraithlike from the glistening cobblestones. His face was hidden beneath the broad brim of his straw hat, but Sam could see his gnarled knuckles protruding from his frayed sleeves, and knobby yellow ankles the size of apples below his tattered trousers. Behind the old man a broken-down nag of a horse stamped and snorted, steam rising from its quivering flanks. Behind the horse, barely visible in the mist, was the cart with its grotesque cargo, wrapped in several layers of burlap.

  
John was speaking quietly to the old man as they approached the door, a comforting hand upon his shoulder, for clearly our caller was nearly mad with panic. He had done the right thing, their father assured him. He, John Winchester, would take the matter from here. All would be well. The poor old soul nodded his large head, which appeared all the larger with its lid of straw as it bobbed on its spindly neck. 

“Tis a crime. A bloody crime of nature!” he exclaimed at one point. “I shouldn’t have taken it; I should have covered it back up and left it to the mercy of God!”

  
“I take no stances on theology, Erasmus,” said John. “I am a scientist. But it is not said that we are his instruments? If that is the case, then God brought you to her and directed you hence to my door.”

  
“So you won’t report me?” the old man asked, with a sideways glance towards John.

  
“Your secret will be a safe with me as I hope mine will be with you. Ah, here are the boys. Dean, where are your shoes? No, no,” he said as Dean turned to fetch them. “I need you to ready the laboratory.”

  
“Yes, father,” Dean responded dutifully, and turned to go a second time.

  
“And Sam put the pot on. It’s going to be a long night.”

  
“Yes, sir,” Sam said. He turned to follow Dean.

  
“And find my boots, Sam.”

  
“Of course, sir.”

  
They hesitated, waiting for a fourth command. The old man called Erasmus stared.

  
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Their father said. “Snap to!”

  
“Yes, sir,” they copied in unison.

  
As Sam and Dean left them in the alley, hearing the old man ask as they hurried across the kitchen, “Their your boys?”

“Their my assistants,” came John Winchester’s reply.

  
Sam sighed, set the water on to boil and then went down to the basement.

  
Dean had lit the lamps, laid out the instruments. (Dean wasn’t sure which he might need, but had a strong suspicion the old man’s delivery was not alive—Dean had heard no sounds urgency to fetch the cargo inside….though this may have been more hope than suspicion.)

  
Dean watched as Sam removed a fresh smock from the closet and rummage under the stairs for their father’s rubber boots. They weren’t there, and for a moment Sam stood by the examination table in mute panic. Sam had washed them the week before and was certain he had placed them under the stairs.

  
From the kitchen came the clumping of the men’s tread across the wooden floor. Dean watched as fear and panic stretched across Sam’s face, their father was coming and Sam had lost his boots!

  
Dean spied the boots Just as their father and Erasmus began to descend the stairs. They were beneath the worktable, where Sam had placed them. Dean rolled his eyes, Why had Sam put them there? Dean pointed out the shoes to Sam who set them by the stool and waited, his heart pounding, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. Dean wrapped an arm around his shivering younger brother, the basement was very cold, at least ten degrees colder than the rest of the house, and stayed that way year round.  
The load, still wrapped tightly in burlap, must been heavy: The muscles in the men’s necks bulged with the effort and their descent was painfully slow. Once the old man cried for a halt. They paused five steps from the bottom, and the two brothers shared a look, they could see their father was annoyed at this delay. He was anxious to unveil his new prize.   
They eventually heaved their burden onto the examination table. John guided the old man to the stool. Erasmus sank down upon it, removed his straw hat, and wiped his crinkled brow with a filthy rag. He was shaking badly. In the light, Sam could see that nearly all of him was filthy, from his mud-encrusted shoes to his broken fingernails to the fine lines and crevasses of his ancient face. He could smell the rich, loamy aroma of damp earth rising from him.

  
“A crime,” he murmured. “A crime!”

  
“Yes, grave-robbing is a crime,” said their father. “ A very serious crime, Erasmus. A thousand-dollar fine and five years hard labor.” He shrugged into his smock and motioned for his boots. He leaned against the banister to tug them on. “We are coconspirators now. I must trust you, and you in turn must trust me. Sam, where is my tea?”  
Sam raced up the stairs. Below, the old man was saying “I have a family to feed. My wife, she’s very ill; she needs medicine. I can’t find work, and what use is gold and jewels to the dead?”

  
They had left the back door ajar. Sam swung it closed and threw the bolt, but not until he checked the alley. Sam saw nothing but fog, which had grown thicker, and the horse, its face dominated by its large eyes that seemed to implore Sam for help.

  
Sam could hear the rise and fall of the voices in the basement as Sam prepared the tea, Erasmus’s with its high pitched, semi-hysterical edge, Dean’s soothing tone, and his fathers measured and low, beneath which lurked an impatient curtness no doubt born of his eagerness to unwrap the old man’s unholy bundle. Sam dressed the tray with sugar and cream and two cups. Though his father hadn’t ordered the second, Sam thought the old man might need a cup to repair his shattered nerves. Lastly, Sam slipped a sugar cube into his breast pocket.

  
“…halfway to it, the ground just gave beneath me, the old grave-robber was saying as Sam descended with the tray. “As if I struck a hollow or pocket in the earth. I fell face-first upon the top of the casket. Don’t know if my fall cracked the lid or if it was cracked by the….cracked before I fell.”  
“Before, no doubt,” said John Winchester.

  
They were as Sam had left them, his father leaning against the banister; the old man shivering upon the stool, the only person who had moved was Dean, who now sat on the stairs. Sam offered the old man tea, and he accepted the proffered cup gladly.

  
“Oh, I am chilled to my very bones!” he whimpered.

  
“This has been a cold spring,” their father observed. He struck Dean as at once bored and agitated.

  
“I couldn’t just leave it there,” the old man explained. “Cover it up again and leave it? No, no. I’ve more respect than that. I fear God. I fear the judgment of eternity! A crime, Winchester. An abomination! So once I gathered my wits, I used the horse and a bit of rope to haul them from the hole, wrapped them up…brought them here.”

  
“You did the right thing, Erasmus.”

  
“There’s but one man who’ll know what to do,’ I said to myself. Forgive me, but you must know what they say about you and the curious goings-on in this house. Only the deaf to not know about John Winchester and the house on Harrington Lane!”

  
“Then I am fortunate,” said John Winchester dryly, “”that you are not deaf.”

  
He went to the old man’s side and placed both hands on his shoulders.

  
“You have my confidence, Erasmus Gray. As I’m certain I have yours. I will speak to no one of your involvement in this ‘crime,’ as you call it, as I’m sure you will keep mum regarding mine. Now, for your trouble…”

  
He produced a wad of bills from his pocket and stuffed them into the old man’s hands. Sam took this moment of distraction to settle near his brother, slipping him the sugar cube.

  
“I don’t mean to rush you off, but each moment you stay endangers both you and my work, both of which matter a great deal to me, though one perhaps a bit more than the other,” he added with a tight smile. He turned to Sam. “Sam, show our caller to the door.” Then he turned back to Erasmus Gray. “You have done an invaluable service of science, sir.”

  
The old man seemed more interested in the advancement of his fortunes , for he was staring openmouthed at the cash in his still-quivering hands. Their father urged him to his feet and toward the stairs, instructing Sam not to forget to lock the back door and for Dean to find his shoes.

  
“And don’t lollygag, Sam. We’ve work to last us the rest of the night, Snap to!”

 


End file.
